Oil Production Models with Normal Rate Curves

The normal curve has been used to fit the rate of both world and US oil production. In this article we give the first theoretical basis for these curve fittings. It is well known that oil field sizes can be modeled by independent samples from a lognormal distribution. We show that when field sizes are lognormally distributed, the starting time of the production of a field is approximately a linear function of the logarithm of its size, and production of a field occurs within a small enough time interval, then the resulting total rate of production is close to being a normal curve.